Apr 042012
 

One exciting news item + three brand new videos = this post.

NE OBLIVISCARIS

I know that less than three weeks have passed since our last update about Australia’s Ne Obliviscaris, but I think I already made clear that just about any news concerning this band and their forthcoming album is going to get space at NCS.

The new album is called Portal of I, and I expect to drown blissfully in the one hour and 11 minutes of unique music it will undoubtedly serve up. Now, finally, after years of work and more difficulties than many bands encounter, we have a release date for NeO’s debut album: May 7, 2012. We don’t yet have pre-order information, but we understand that’s coming soon.

In addition to the release date, NeO have also announced that they will be touring Australia in support of the album. Although I have no hope of seeing any of these shows except in my mind’s eye, I’m swallowing my frustration and including the tour dates anyway:

Friday, May 18@ The Corner Hotel, Melbourne 18+
Saturday, May 19@ The Castle, Dandenong, Melbourne *ALL AGES*
Saturday, June 9@ The Enigma Bar, Adelaide
Saturday, June 16@ The Bald Faced Stag (The Wall), Sydney
Brisbane show: TBA

Now, onward to those three new music videos . . .

ZOMBIE, INC.

I found out about this Austrian/German band from NCS patron KevinP. It includes Martin Schirenc, who is also a member of a well-regarded band named Hollenthon and a former member of the now defunct Pungent Stench, as well as four other metal veterans.

Zombie Inc.’s debut album, A Dreadful Decease, was released last August by Massacre Records. I haven’t had the pleasure of hearing all of it, but I have had the perverted pleasure of watching the band’s new music video for a song from the album called “Challenge of the Undead”. The song is a titanic motherfucker of old-school death-gore that compels headbanging and goat-throwing.

The video, of course, is loaded with zombies and B-movie special effects. It also makes perfect sense: If you’re a metal band about to set up for a gig and you get attacked by a gang of zombies, you fight back with your instruments.

I especially liked the demonstration of what a death metal howl can do to a zombie’s intestinal tract. Watch for it.
 


 

BLOODSHOT DAWN

I’ve already spilled a lot of ink about this UK band’s 2012 album, which remains one of the strongest debut releases of the year. To quote again from my January review (because in my eyes few people are more quotable than me): “In a nutshell, Bloodshot Dawn’s debut album is a shockingly strong explosion of fused thrash and melodic death metal, driven by a guitar duo who have bright days ahead of them.” The album is up on Bandcamp for streaming and for digital download directly from the band — and this is the link for that.

Yesterday, the band released the first music video for the album — the song is called “Visions”, and it was produced by Creative Junkie Media, who also recently created videos for Aborted and Cerebral Bore. According to the band, the video was shot in January, on the coldest day of the year in London, and they weren’t exactly playing in cozy surroundings when they blasted this song for the cameras either.

The song is just excellent, and it showcases what makes this band so worthy of attention. It’s melodic death metal that shreds faces, drops jaws with its technical acrobatics, and pops eyes with its dual guitar soloing. The video does a fine job capturing the frenetic energy of the music. If you haven’t yet jumped on the Bloodshot Dawn bandwagon, this video should vault you on board:
 


 

OVERKILL

This New York band are now more than 30 years into their career. Although I’ve never been a big fan of their music, longevity does deserve recognition. And so does their new music video, which debuted only minutes ago. It’s for a song called “Electric Rattle Snake”, which appears on the OverKill’s new album, The Electric Age.

I think the story line in the video is a metaphor for the point that you can’t kill this music, no matter how hard you try. Old-school thrash will continue to come back from repeated megawatt shocks and persist in inflicting riff-strewn ass-whooping.

And that’s certainly what this song accomplishes. Much as I dislike Overkill’s vocal styling, I can’t deny that the instrumental part of this song gets the blood pumping, and I especially enjoyed the unexpected instrumental break in the song’s middle segment. It’s a melodic slow-down that provides an interesting breather before the band punches the accelerator one more time for the finale.
 


 

The Electric Age came out last week on eOne Music. If you haven’t had a chance to pick it up, the Amazon MP3 store now has it available for $7.99

  4 Responses to “NEWS AND VIDEO ROUND-UP: NE OBLIVISCARIS, ZOMBIE, INC., BLOODSHOT DAWN, AND OVERKILL”

  1. All of those videos gave me a maniacal grin/boner combination, although when the zombie shit it’s guts out that pretty much sealed the deal.

  2. The Bloodshot Dawn song is awesome; the whole album is pretty sweet actually. I liked it more than I thought I was gonna despite your consistent assurances that it ripped. Oh, what a fool I was.

  3. Vocals aisde, Bloodshot Dawn reminds me more of Symphony X’s breed of agressive progressive metal than they do melodic death metal. I likes it, nonetheless.

    I’m with you about Overkill’s vocals; I like some of what the band’s done over the years, but I unfortunately cannot take too much of them at one time. I liked the middle part of the song, but I’m not so sure that it fits. It would make for a cool song on its own (well, the foundation for one, anyway); you can slow down and still kick ass as a thrash band.

    Not sure what to thing about Zombie Inc. Lately, I’ve been feeling that the zombie genre has become overpopulated as of late, and it’s probably only going to get worse when World War Z hits the theaters. I have high hopes for the movie, but it may spawn even more craptacular zombie movies, games and novels. We’ve seen it with fantasy and sci-fi in general, vampires and wizardly stype stuff more recently. I think it’s time to put the zombies away for a while again. Okay, after the third Newsflesh novel gets released, then it’s time.

    As for Ne Obliviscaris’ album… good to know that there’s now a release date set. On that day, I may suffer violent guitargasms while listening.

 Leave a Reply

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

(required)

(required)

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.